BY CANON J. W. HORSLEY, Late Vicar of Detling . Price 3/6 Net. MAIDSTONE: “South Eastern Gazette” Newspaper Co., Ltd., 4, High Street . 1921....

When I was a school boy at Canterbury, in the fifties and sixties, my first interest in philology was evoked by Trench on The Study of Words , and by the more elaborate pioneer work, Isaac Taylor’s Words and Places , while oral instruction was afforded by the lectures of Dean Alford and the class teaching of my Headmaster, Mitchinson. All four of these leaders having been clergymen, it is perhaps fitting that, at a considerable distance, both of time and of ability, another cleric should attempt

Men of Kent must not make too much of their county motto, Invicta . As a matter of fact, we have been conquered at various times, and sometimes before the rest of England succumbed to the invader. The aborigines, who were probably somewhat like the Esquimeaux, a small race, having only stone weapons and tools, lived on the fringe of the great glacier of the last Ice Age (perhaps 50,000 years ago), which enabled one (though doubtless no one tried) to walk from what is now Middlesex and Kent to th

The first appearance of Kent in history is in the Gallic War of Julius Cæsar, who paid us the compliment of saying, Ex his omnibus, longe sunt humanissimi qui Cantium incolunt , on which Shakespeare wrote, “Kent in commentaries Cæsar writ, Is termed the civil’st place in all the isle.” Of his presence here, however, the only relic is perhaps more in the realm of legend than of history. There is a mound or barrow at Chilham known as Julaber’s or Juliberry’s grave, which has been referred to Juliu

The Romans who had conquered, ruled, and exploited our land for four centuries, departed in A.D. 411, owing to the dire necessity of defending their own land against the Goths from Northern Europe. Already here they had been attacked and pressed southwards by the Picts of the Highlands, aided by the Scots of Ireland. To avoid Pictish conquest the Britons offered land and pay to the English, who up to then had been aiding the Picts. Who were these English? A long peninsula runs northwards (as few

In the earliest days of which we have knowledge all Kent was practically either forest or marsh, with a little cornland in Thanet and sheep pastures in Sheppey, and it was plainly on the edges of the forests (Blean and Anderida running right across the county from Whitstable to Cranbrook) that the early settlers from Jutland made their homes. Like pioneer backwoodsmen in Canada and elsewhere, they had first to clear of trees, and then to fence, the spot each family had chosen. For 25 years I hav

— HAM = Ham means homestead, but—hamm an enclosure or bend in a river, the former being the more common. It is only by early Saxon documents that we can tell which word is meant. Alkham for the first, perhaps the Hundred of Ham for the latter. — ING , in the middle or end of a name means “sons of.” A final ling is also a patronymic when the name ends in ol or ele. Thus Donnington is the settlement of the sons of Donna, and as Didling or Dudelyng in Sussex (with 13th century forms of Dedling and

A Furore Normanorum was a petition in an old litany in England before it had gained that name. And with reason, for the success of Angles, Jutes and Saxons in the conquest of England drew the attention of Scandinavian and other Vikings, who found that booty could be gained by rapid raids. It was at the end of the eighth century that the Danes (as they came to be called, although the wider “Northmen” would be a better term), reached the land of the Angles, coming from Norway to Dorset, and genera

Most islands are attached portions of the nearest mainland, severed in prehistoric times by subsidence of the intervening soil and the action of strong currents. Thus even England is a portion of the Continent, as its fauna and flora proclaim, while Ireland was severed earlier still. Thus also the Isle of Wight is Hampshire. So our Kentish islands, now only two and neither now to be effectually circumnavigated, are practically absorbed in the mainland. “Sheppey, Thanet—what else?” most would say

In the search for the meaning of a place-name it is necessary to go back as far as possible and discover, if we can, its earliest form. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle , and the later Domesday Book of 1086; the gradual blending of Saxon and Norman into the English tongue; and then the invention of printing; all may have had an effect on the pronunciation, and so the spelling, of a word. Also there is the tendency to shorten a long word, as when Pepingeberia becomes Pembury, or Godwinston, through Guss

There are not so many as one would expect considering the importance and power and the possessions of the Church in Kent. Taking some as they occur to me, there are All Hallows , in Sheppey, so named from the dedication of its church to All Saints’. The Latin Sanctus and the Teutonic Helige are the same in meaning. So we have, too, in Lower Halstow the Saxon helige stow—the holy place. In a list of Jack Cade’s Kentish followers, in 1450, the parish of Omi Scor is mentioned, which puzzled me for

We have seen how common in Kent are place-names derived from patronymics of the name of a family or clan, such as Kennington, the settlement of the Cennings, but there are others, mainly more modern, which include the name of an individual, who usually would be the lord of the manor. Thus some have imagined that Swingfield , near Dover, is Sweyn’s Field, as if the Saxons would have named a place after their piratical enemy. The older forms, Swonesfelde and Swynefelde, would more naturally point

When a language is not pure, but the result of the intermingling and interaction of several tongues as distinct as Celtic, Saxon and Norman; and when, by the wear and tear of daily use through centuries, place-names have altered in detail of spelling and pronunciation; and when for a long time spelling and reading were arts known but to a small minority of the population, it is plainly inevitable that the original form and real meaning of a place-name should often be difficult to trace. But alwa

In considering the three score and ten, or more, place-names in Kent which end in ham , we are met with the initial difficulty that there are two Saxon words Ham—home, and Hamm—land drained by dykes, an East Friesian word, though the far more common Ham is the Teutonic heim, familiar as a suffix in Germany, which in Picardy becomes hen, and in Friesland um. Either ton or ham as a suffix after ing denotes where a Saxon family or clan had settled and made its toun or heim. Thus the Pæfings made a

The word Sole occurs frequently as a Kentish place-name, and is purely Saxon. Dr. Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary gives Sol as meaning “soil—dirt—a wallowing place”; while Lewis defines it as “a dirty pond of standing water.” The Saxon verb is Sylian, “to soil or cover with mud.” So an old Kentish will has the words “beside the wateringe sole in trend ( i.e. , the end) of Yckhame streete.” Now, as the chief industries of the Saxons in Kent were pigs and pots—as now they are bricks and beer—it

There are two Anglo-Saxon words which have to be distinguished—Beorh, like the German Berg, meaning a hill; and Buruh or Byrig, which comes later into the suffix Bury, which again later comes to be used for a division of Hundred or simply for a town. In the south of England we have most of the distinctively Saxon or Jutish Bury, while in the north we have the Anglian and Norse forms of Burgh, Brough, Borough, more common. And one must add, as a variant of the same word, Barrow, which in modern u

Hithe is the Saxon for haven, or place where ships could lie, and Hythe (Heda in Domesday Book, and Hee in a deed of 1229) was near the edge of the sea when history begins; but West Hythe, which is now three miles from the sea, was the old port used by the Romans and by them called Limene, the harbour. Hence our modern Lympne—Portus Lemanis, in which the p is a modern addition. I find it Limene in 1291, Lymen in 1396, Limne in 1475, and Lymne in 1480. Then, right in the Weald, is the hamlet of S

Perhaps the most common place-name in England is that of Cold Harbour; though Sutton and Norton may run it close. Over one hundred and seventy have been enumerated in England, a number which would be brought up to over two hundred if we added the Caldecots and the Calcotts (we have a Calcott in Sturry parish) which are names with the same meaning. And yet in a sense Cold Harbour is not a place-name, for the only parish of that name was not formed and named until 1842. It is near Dorking. However

As I have already said, Kent was once mainly either dense primæval forest, or marshland, which fringed nearly all its coastal border from Sussex to London. The greater part of the forest was that which extended along the northern border of the South Saxons with a breadth of thirty and a length of one hundred and twenty miles. But the royal forest of Blean (in which I was born) is continuous with Anderida, although it bears a separate name in a charter of King Offa in 791. This would make the for

Uninterruptedly from Saxon times Kent has been divided into districts called Lathes, and these into Hundreds, and these again into Borowes or Townes, the last being in Kent synonymous and used to the exclusion of the name parish down to the times of Elizabeth. First, as to the meanings and uses of these three words. Lathe takes us back to the Saxon Læth for land, and in Latin documents appears as Lestus or Lastus, e.g. , “In Lasto Sanctii Augustini” in a deed of 1347. Lambarde, however, derives